The present invention generally relates to the field of explosive ordinance disposal, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for disrupting explosive devices allowing multiple shots delivered in an arbitrary order at the discretion of the user.
Disrupters are typically used by law enforcement and military personnel to disable explosive devices. Disrupters often operate by driving a projectile, such as water or a solid projectile, which penetrates or otherwise disrupts an explosive device without detonating the explosive. A variety of projectile-based disrupter designs have been created to address the unique dangers of the operating environment. For example, disrupters are often designed to be operable by personnel located at a safe standoff distance from a suspected explosive device. Other designs focus on improving performance or ease of use by adding features such as recoil mitigation, disposable components, light material construction, or enhanced projectile design. However, prior art designs do not adequately provide multi-shot disruption capability to an operator, particularly when the operator is located at a safe standoff distance from the explosive device.
Law enforcement and military personnel encounter explosive devices located in vehicles or within concealing packaging. Multiple disrupter shots are often necessary to access and disable such devices, requiring bulky multiple disrupter barrels or single-shot disrupter reloading. Size and weight constraints of robotic mounts limit the usefulness of prior art designs employing multiple barrels. Prior art single-shot devices, requiring manual loading by operators between disrupter shots, cause operational delay. For robot-mounted disrupter operations, the robot must return the single-shot disrupter to personnel at the safe standoff distance for reloading between each disrupter shot, causing additional delay. Further, the operator may desire to use different cartridge load and projectile combinations for specific shots in a single operation, requiring multiple disrupters or disrupter reconfiguration. Deploying multiple disrupters in such cases can be cost-prohibitive. Disrupter reloading and reconfiguration in such cases can be time-prohibitive.